Avocado and ants on toast? Chef says buzz is building around edible insects

Arnott’s have made many “special edition” Tim Tams in the past, but chances are they have not considered adding insects to the recipe.

Joseph Yoon would like to change that.

Chef Joseph Yoon is a thought leader on edible insects and insect agriculture.Credit: Paul Harris

“We ​​can create a Tim Tam utilising cricket powder in the biscuit, also adding some other insects in the chocolate mix,” Yoon says.

“Maybe we’ll garnish the Tim Tam with some insects on top as well.”

He has ideas for another Aussie favourite, avocado on toast.

“How about we add black ants, which have this citric flavour because of the formic acid that they have as a defence mechanism?” he says.

Yoon is a New York chef turned “edible insect ambassador” whose organisation, Brooklyn Bugs, promotes the normalisation of insects as part of the human diet.

He is in Brisbane to speak to the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries and the Entomological Society of Queensland, and will serve them up examples of his insect cuisine into the bargain.

On Thursday, he will give a public lecture at the Queensland Museum as part of its Insect Agency exhibition, while on Saturday, he is cooking an insect menu at conservation festival Sunshine Coast BioBlitz.

“There are over 2000 species of edible insects and all have incredibly different flavour profiles.”

JOSEPH YOON

Yoon says that insects take vastly fewer resources to farm than cattle and are nutrient-rich.

“Four tablespoons of cricket powder have about 30 grams of protein. And so in lunch or dinner, just four tablespoons will meet the protein requirement for an adult.”

He says that most people don’t understand the huge potential of insects as an ingredient.

“When people say ‘I just can’t eat insects because of the texture’ I’m like, ‘do you mean crunchiness, or the squishiness, or every single texture in between?’

“There are over 2000 species of edible insects and all have incredibly different flavour profiles.

“It doesn’t mean that we want to sell a whole bowl full of crickets but rather, what if we made a cricket burger? What if we made cricket mac ‘n’ cheese and cricket fried rice?”

Yoon is on a mission to taste every edible insect he can.Credit: Paul Harris

Formerly a personal chef for private clients, Yoon became an advocate for entomophagy in 2017 after working with an artist, Miru Kim, who asked him to help conquer her fear of insects by preparing them for her to eat.

Yoon found a UN Food and Agricultural Organisation report on how insects can play a role in sustainably feeding a world population of 10 billion by 2050 and realised that he could adopt a bigger purpose in life.

“Not to be too corny, but it has put me through my own metamorphosis,” he says.

When he travels Yoon makes a point of looking at local menu items to see how they can be “buggified”. In Quebec recently he made poutine using cricket stock in the gravy and topped off with grasshoppers.

“We have over 2 billion people eating insects already, and the sad thing is because of globalisation, cultures that have traditionally eaten insects are moving away from it out of shame, because Americans and Europeans are not eating them.”

He says that First Nations cultures have long understood the value of eating insects and that he is hoping to try witchetty grubs while in Australia.

Yoon is on a mission to taste every edible insect he can – and arachnids as well. If he offers you a spider roll, he’s probably not talking about soft-shell crab.

“What’s amazing,” he says, “is how close the flavour of a tarantula is to soft-shell crab when prepared in a tempura batter.”

Tickets to The Edible Insect Revolution with Joseph Yoon are available online.

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